In English (and on Netflix in the U.S.), it is listed as The Film Critic.

But we pay our respects to international films even if the template of our website goes haywire in so doing.

El Crítico is an Argentine-Chilean coproduction.

Sounds like a wine, right?

Well, this beats any Malbec I’ve ever tasted.

I cannot say enough good things about this picture!

First things first-Hernán Guerschuny is a goddamned genius.

From the very start of this film we get the Godard whisper…that voiceover which started (si je me souviens bien) circa 1967 with 2 ou 3 Choses que je sais d’elle.

The majority (80%?) of El Crítico is in Spanish, but the remaining 20% (in French) makes all the difference.

We have an Argentine film critic, played masterfully by Rafael Spregelburd, who thinks in French.

We are thus privy to his internal monologue throughout the film.

For anyone who writes about motion pictures, El Crítico is indispensable.

Priceless.

Just right.

[not even a pinch of salt too much]

Dolores Fonzi is really good, but Señor Spregelburd is outstanding.

Spregelburd plays a Godard-obsessed film critic (are you seeing why I like this?) whose fumbling attempts at romance stem from his total immersion in cinema.

Guerschuny deftly interpolates scenes which are “meta-” in the same sense that Cinema Paradiso was essentially a film ABOUT film.

And I am a fan of this approach.

It worked perfectly for the greatest artistic creation in the history of mankind (Histoire(s) du cinéma) and it works exceptionally well for Guerschuny’s film [of which James Monaco and la Nouvelle vague I think would be proud].

Guerschuny, like his main character Tellez [Spregelburd], wants to explode the genre of romcom.

Yes, you heard me right: romcom.

And it thus places El Crítico in the same tradition as Truffaut’s Tirez sur le pianiste and Godard’s Une Femme est une femme.

But something happens to our protagonist Tellez.

And something, I suspect, is in the heart (!) of director Guerschuny.

This is, in fact, a film about appreciating naïveté.

It is a postmodern idea.

And an idea dear to my heart.

It’s quite simple, really…

I can appreciate Arnold Schoenberg as much as AC/DC.

Abel Gance as much as Napoleon Dynamite.

The idea is that pretentious films (and film reviews) can become just as tiresome as trite, Entertainment Weekly boilerplate.

Does that magazine even still exist?

I don’t know.

It’s an honest question.

In fact, I wasn’t even sure I had the title correct.

It’s supermarket-checkout-lane film criticism.

But it’s not worthless.

Sometimes the most esteemed, erudite film critics become blind to the beauty around them.

They don’t give simple movies a chance.

On the other hand, there are a ton of crappy movies out there today.

But El Crítico is not one of them.

But let me tell you about the secret weapon of the film under consideration:

Telma Crisanti.

Without her, this movie fails.

Not miserably, but the façade falls apart. And then the superstructure…

Our narrators are SwanSong (another YouTube handle [whose voice sounds strikingly like that of David Knight from infowars.com]), Insanemedia (the name of the site Swan Song edits…another YouTube name?), and the previously mentioned producers (minus Klein).

I have to admit…

The first time I heard Steve Shine’s opening song (about Adam Lanza) I wasn’t overly impressed.

But it has grown on me.

It employs echo delay rather effectively.

But let’s clear the air.

Just what is it to which this film’s title refers?

It is, if I am not mistaken, a bit of police radio activity from Dec. 14, 2012 which sounds like the phrase “end the life of Adam”.

I have been familiar with that thread of inquiry for awhile.

I initially didn’t put much stock into those elusive words.

It’s almost like something you’d hear on a ghost-hunting program.

But it makes some sense…

Was it a garbled phrase?

A twisted transmission?

Or did some official from some U.S. government agency (FEMA?) actually utter the words “end the life of Adam”?

Because, you see, within the Sandy Hook research “community” (hey, if our 16 intel agencies can be a community, then fuck off!) it is not firmly established whether Adam Lanza even existed.

This emaciated superhuman of murderous efficiency seems to be a prime candidate for fictional personage.

In the opening credits of our film, you can also see a graphic symbolizing the theory that Adam Lanza (who may have only existed in a handful of photographs) was actually his brother Ryan Lanza at an earlier age.

To simplify (Mr. Ockham), there was no Adam.

There was only Ryan.

And to borrow a phase from another brave bunch of auteurs (aside from this IMS crew), it is quite possible (perhaps even probable) that “nobody died at Sandy Hook”.

The consensus from Dr. Fetzer and others seems to be that it was a drill which was passed off as the real thing.

I have not had the pleasure of reading Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, but the fact that Amazon.com, Inc. banned the book (after it had done brisk sales for about a month) while continuing to sell Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf is really a case of the world having been turned on its head (to paraphrase Guy Debord).

But we press on…

The story of Adam Lanza seems to be about more than just gun control.

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree that the primary purpose of the event was to take another Fabian socialist baby-step towards disarming the American public, but there’s a little more to it.

IMS do a great job of highlighting this.

Adam Lanza is Tim McVeigh updated for 2012.

It had been about 17 years.

It was time for another unbelievable domestic terrorist to emerge.

Now, I’m no expert on the OKC bombing, but from what I’ve seen it looks like McVeigh was a patsy in the mold of Oswald.

Adam Lanza seems to be a whole new level of government duplicity: a virtual killer.

Sandy Hook seems to be a “kinder, gentler” form of state-sponsored (you read right) terror.

My guess is that some of our leaders in the U.S. fancy themselves to be quite humane now that they’ve marginally figured out how to kill without killing.

All they wanted were the effects.

“Never let a good tragedy go to waste.” –Rahm Emanuel?

If true, this would be a new systemic trend.

It goes along laughably with the “pinpoint precision” of drone attacks.

We know that is not true.

Ask the residents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

Or I might have it all wrong…

Because the truth is on CNN, right?

Remember Desert Storm?

Ooohhh…Ahhhhh…

Cameras on bombs.

Look, ma! We’re killing the “right” people.

Yay!!!

Look how humane war has become 🙂

The Gulf War…1990/1991.

An in-and-out burger war.

“Kinder, gentler” bombing.

At least it was marginally “prudent” (though completely duplicitous).

You can take the Hill & Knowlton campaign…Kuwaiti babies ripped from incubators.

[As witnessed by the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S….who (she) was not in Kuwait…and was not advertised for who she really was…because she was acting…in front of the U.S. Congress…in a public relations campaign to shore up public sentiment that war (the Gulf War) was necessary.]

But you can also dig deep…into the State Department…and know that Saddam was given a promise that we would not interfere if he invaded Kuwait.

Whoops… Sounds like a cynical stratagem FOR WAR to me.

Just itching to get their war on (as the inimitable Wayne Madsen says)…

So back to Adam Lanza.

No. Wait a minute.

Let’s not forget the United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade (1999).

We “see” Adam Lanza from the back. Playing Dance Dance Revolution (not to be confused with East Germany…the other white DDR).

“Adam Lanza” with his Beatle haircut.

So what is this “other” agenda to which I referred?

Other than gun control.

It is that WEIRD = BAD.

If someone is shy or out of the ordinary, then they are your next shoot-’em-up rampage candidate.

Who benefits?

Cui bono?

The system. The spectacle (to again reference Guy Debord).

If you don’t look the part.

If you aren’t in style.

God forbid you’re as dorky as Napoleon Dynamite.

Then everyone should fear you.

You are a virus. A stain.

What did they focus on?

Autism.

The purported acts of Adam Lanza have nothing to do with autism or Asperger’s syndrome.

But that was one of the insidious messages which the DUMB public was to receive.

Yet some are not buying it.

Even if I was a proponent of gun control (which I am not…rather, quite the opposite), I wouldn’t feel good about the hollow (ineffective) victory achieved by the national security state through Sandy Hook.

Well, in addition to Independent Media Solidarity, there is Sheila Matthews of ablechild.org. You can hear her story in The Life of Adam about the quest to make Lanza’s psychiatric treatment history public.

It’s not public.

Almost nothing about this weird Sandy Hook case is public.

It’s all secret.

It’s all in line with the limits of reality.

If the reality was that it was merely a drill (passed off as real) to sway public opinion, then it would have the limits of reality placed upon it.

The fraud could only be as convincing as its budget (and the devious professionalism of those running this operation).

The unnecessary secrecy is in line with the potential truth. There are no pictures of the crime scene because there was no crime scene.

Rather, the crime scene was the scene of a far different crime.

The crime was fraud, not murder.

I can’t help bringing up Anderson Cooper again…because his whole role in this shenanigan is really revolting.

It is no stretch of the imagination to say that he and CNN are responsible for an extremely articulate, tenured professor losing his job.

That is the misfortune of Dr. James Tracy.

You will hear his story in The Life of Adam.

You’ll see the fumbling, bumbling police Sgt. Paul Vance (who threatens people like me for spreading rumors). This is the same authority who couldn’t make up his mind where the supposed shooter (Lanza) shot himself. Was it in the hall? Room 10? There’s a difference. How could you forget that? It’s fresh on your mind.

Better have a look at your FEMA script one more time…

Of particular interest is the story of Sabrina Phillips.

I must admit that her line of inquiry sometimes loses me. In other words, she is deeper into this than me.

But I really respect what she is trying to do.

Dig up the truth. Damn it!

Not only does television suck (sorry all you network addicts), but the news is blatantly fake.

Anderson Cooper needs to march right back to Langley and demand better acting lessons.

As James Mason said, perhaps the “Actors Studio”.

You are no Cary Grant, Mr. Cooper. You’re no Murrow.

You’re nothing. You’re just a well-dressed sellout.

The Internet will reveal your grave error in getting Tracy fired.

You’re no journalist. You’re no better than the “evil empire” over at Fox News.

I hope you will take the time to watch The Life of Adam and its equally-brilliant predecessor We Need to Talk About Sandy Hook.

The sad fact is that conspiracies are ruling our lives. We can ignore them, but they are the main political tool of the 21st century. They get somewhat more sophisticated each time, but they are still false flags…still just kids with their hands in the cookie jar pointing at an uninvolved sibling.

Like Napoleon Dynamite, what should have been a larf was generally a sobfest for me throughout.

If you’re having problems in life, you need to see this movie.

Hollywood is so denigrated these days because the vast majority of popular cinema is utter shite.

From the very beginning, Pumpkin is different.

We should thank American Zoetrope.

And for that we have to thank Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.

Do you even know what a zoetrope is?

Well, I do.

And they did.

And it was le mot juste.

A zoetrope is special.

Let’s call it retarded cinema.

A more pure form. Slowed down.

Pumpkin grossed $308,552 at the box office.

No, I didn’t forget a comma and an additional three digits.

But the Bureau of Labor Statistics has no way of predicting the sort of inflation Pumpkin will experience in the annals of cinema history.

For any who have ever doubted Christina Ricci: this is her masterpiece.

As lead actress and coproducer, she gives a performance which goes deeper than even the esteemed Thora Birch in Ghost World.

Yes, this is that sort of film.

Indispensable.

I have overused it of late.

But there is no other word. Pumpkin and Ghost World and Napoleon Dynamite are not second-class films to such as I fidanzati. No. They are equals with Ermanno Olmi’s masterpiece.

But don’t get confused.

Pumpkin goes in a direction completely “other” than any film I’ve ever seen.

Sure…it starts out tongue-in-cheek.

It is perhaps a dystopia which is best summed up by the saccharine mise-en-scène of The Truman Show. But where The Truman Show fails (and that is in many places), Pumpkin succeeds at telling a timeless story.

The story is the cast.

[Thank you Marshall McLuhan.]

Ricci is a thespian goddess here. Real skill. Real goddamn skill!

But neck-and-neck is Hank Harris.

I can’t nail it.

It’s something I saw long ago.

At my college orientation.

A bit of Sam Shepard and some other playwrights.

Sure. It is Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men.

But it’s more.

Sweeter. More optimistic. More frothing with disgust.

All three.

A concoction.

Frozen yogurt and 1400 on the SAT.

Harry Lennix is indispensable to the story. [start counting]

He is the angry poet. Not a college professor. And this is not a class.

This is a poetry workshop, motherfucker!

Even Julio Oscar Mechoso is indispensable in his short role as Dr. Frederico Cruz. [where we at?]

But let’s talk about some buttresses.

Melissa McCarthy is indispensable (truly) as Julie.

It’s not an easy role.

And yet, she’s not as bad off as Pumpkin.

Who’s Pumpkin?

Is it Christina Ricci with her jack-o’-lantern-perfect bob–her Chantal Goya -meets- David Bowie Low surf perm? That one little curl…so perfect…all the way ’round?

No.

It’s Hank Harris.

He’s Pumpkin. Napoleon. Lothario.

But Sam Ball is especially indispensable here. [Ugh…]

He is Ken (actually Kent) to Ricci’s Barbie.

Tennis pro.

Spitting image of Ryan Reynolds.

Or Whitney Houston…

Anyway.

This cast brings it together.

Bringing it all back home are directors Anthony Abrams and Adam Larson Broder (neither of whom have a Wikipedia page).

BLOODY HELL, HOLLYWOOD! HOW COULD YOU CHURN OUT SO MANY FILMS AND NOT SEE THE BRILLIANCE OF THESE TWO BLOKES!?!?!?!?!

But in the end it’s just Ricci and Hank Harris.

The brilliance of a duo.

A truly timeless film.

I’m inclined to agree with many (including Dr. Steve Pieczenik) that Adam Lanza did not exist.

But Pumpkin Romanoff (a nod to Michael Romanoff, the storied Lithuanian restaurateur of 1940s/50s Hollywood?) most certainly did exist. For me. Tonight. When I needed him most.

If this film makes you cry, then you have problems. Welcome to my world. Hopefully this will be the best thing I have ever written.

There are a couple of times. Laugh out loud. But those parts which pass by like strange quirks. The space in between laughs. That is the pathos of marginalia.

People. Marginalized. What the hell am I talking about?

There’s awkward and aw-kward. It is the latter with which we are concerned. A whole new level of pariah.

But also mundane. And not to be forgotten…endearingly strange.

Preston, Idaho. It’s real. Really exists.

Napoleon and his brother Kip. Lots of weird mustaches here. But Napoleon is just the geeky gawky gangly guy growing up.

As Kip shows, some of us never grow up. And Uncle Rico…whoa mama. All regrets and what-ifs.

Grandmother was at the dunes and broke her coccyx. Tailbone.

Riding the four-wheeler.

Grandma’s got a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend. Or something.

This is one time when some Wikipedia contributor has actually done a loving portrait of a film.

Perusing.

Rico is our campervan Beethoven. A real jerk. But not without his humorous (humerus?) moments. Funny bone.

Fortunately LaFawnduh’s cousin is apparently Jamiroquai (they being a band and not a person).

Whoa…aw-kward. Writing.

Jon Heder approaches the greatness of Peter Sellers in this film. Heder is our lead…our anti-Bond (James). Not cool. Never was cool. Painfully existing.

Tina Majorino brings an indispensable side ponytail grace to this story. Such a beautiful girl. A real person. This film succeeds by employing a sort of Robert Bresson technique. It also is the laughing equivalent of the Romanian New Wave. To wit, Jared Hess made one of the most important American movies of recent decades. Kudos to Fox Searchlight Pictures for giving this the distribution it deserved. We know they later picked up Beasts of the Southern Wild. Nice job Fox Searchlight!

And why do we cry? Part of it is Efren Ramirez as Pedro. Down here in San Antonio. People living for their Spurs. I know. Me too. Small victories seem so big. El Presidente. He builds her a cake. The vacuous Summer. No!!! (little hearts beneath the exclamation points)

It’s hot. Pedro doesn’t have air conditioning. Napoleon’s top-loading VCR comes in handy after he scores a sweet Kid ‘n’ Play video at the thrift store. Kip backs over the Tupperware in a failed Ginsu demonstration. “Dang it!”

Pedro from Juarez. In Idaho. That’s like a Martian in Indiana or Iowa. It’s real. We all end up someplace. For some reason. And the cousins with the sweet low-rider. The cousins with the hookups. A short segment about banding together. People with odds stacked against them helping other people with odds stacked against them.

A very humble project.

And someday Napoleon’s ligers will hang in the MoMA…and his portrait of Trisha (with the deftly-shaded upper lip) will fetch $100 million at Sotheby’s.

And LaFawnduh from Detroit. Definitely AOL-era. No cellphones in this movie. Deb (Majorino) has to go to a payphone to tactfully reprimand Napoleon. But it was all Rico’s fault. Uncle Rico. Hell, Napoleon even got a job moving chickens…for $1 an hour. And they had big talons! Just drink the raw eggs and mingle with the farmers. The old people have good stories. About Shoshone arrowheads in the creek bed. White-bread sandwiches. I don’t understand a word I just said.

So when the antihero finally succeeds it elicits an honest firestorm of support. Lots of people with nothing to live for. A little saint for the hallway. A prayer has been answered. They already tore down my high school. Same name, different building. I pass it everyday. It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Some might say. I know there’s a place for me somewhere.

It’s not all about tetherball. It’s the determination. A solitary game. A clueless dork. Thanks be to god. THis movie.

We get older. It’s hard. Our lives didn’t turn out like fairytales. And yet, we push on. We live. We work. We study. We survive. Oh, how much it can mean…a kind word. A moment extra taken to be gentle. Humble. Respectful. Thankful.

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I threw on this film. I’ve sought out Saoirse Ronan films because I have been so impressed with her acting in Hanna and The Grand Budapest Hotel. Suffice it to say, some of her lesser-known films…I never would have watched otherwise. But it’s good. It’s good to exit the genres and areas with which we are most comfortable.

Some of these newer films…there is a trepidation which precedes the viewing. I wonder if I can make it past the first 10 or 15 minutes. Let me say quite plainly: this is a pretty damn good film.

Credit director and writer Amy Heckerling with tapping into a vein of stories which need to be told. Likewise, Michelle Pfeiffer was just the right choice to express the marginalized stories which come to the forefront in this film. Paul Rudd is a shockingly-good support here.

You want marginalized? Well, this film went straight to DVD in the U.S. That’s an insult. I don’t care what the market research said: that was a mistake. Film history will vindicate these pictures which were treated thusly.

Over the hill… 40. Women have it hard. And so do dudes like Adam Pearl (Paul Rudd). Teenage girls have it particularly hard. Saoirse really does a masterful job of delineating a tough role.

I will admit: this film made me tearful on several occasions. Jon Lovitz…yeah, that’s the ticket. Fred Willard…spot on. But no, neither of those two. It’s that look on Pfeiffer’s face when Rudd first reads in an audition. It’s the right look. Taking pride in your craft as a dramatist…even if you’ve been reduced to producing prepubescent pablum.

I’ve been in that chair. A lifetime’s work for one or two lines that might be remembered by history. I’ve been on that date. I live that life every day. Age. And I’ve been the nerd. Whoa have I been the nerd!

I’ve never lied about my age, but I know the industries where that becomes commonplace. No, I’ve never gotten that whole lying thing down very well. Yeah…me and Napoleon Dynamite would be best friends. I guess that makes me Pedro…

Ah, but belief… You can hear it in Bob Dylan’s new album Shadows in the Night. We never stop believing. We can’t. We’d better not. And Tracey Ullman is in our ear with the bad news…

You are right to be paranoid. In general, the world is set up to get you down. Globalizing…hah! Perhaps generalizing? Past aggressive. Passed aggressive. We hear the phrase and we assimilate into our patois. The phrases don’t come with user’s manuals.

It’s a set-up. I hyphenate when I please–when I’m damned good and ready.

And so I cry that I was human. But most of all we cry for ourselves. When the bottom falls out of your little corner of the entertainment industry. This isn’t Los Angeles.

Yeah, I can relate. With all of it. Trying on pants. Damn it.

Some people think they have me all figured out. But mostly, they don’t think. About me:

I don’t have a demo. I have finished films. Call Harry Smith from beyond the grave. He’ll vouch for me.

Beware of the fake. I just want to put food on the table. The only thing that can’t be faked nowadays is food on the table.

Fuck it. Gimme GMO. My high horse rode off long ago. Soft kill the shit outta me. You’ll never know the sadness of the streets.

And for that you are poorer. Consider it like a fine wine…or a classic foreign film. Oops, sorry: no corkscrew and no subtitles.

The Fonz reads Sartre…laughing. Eat your heart out David Lynch.

You should have given him another chance. You’re so responsible. You threw away a heroic love.

I stayed as true as I could. And now nobody calls. My emails go unanswered.

Yes, the time stamp gives it away. The BBC was 20 minutes early. WTC 7.

Suck away. I have moved on. No, I’m not happy.

When Hal Blaine hits the floor tom and snare after the intro…like the world comes to a violent halt: “Wouldn’t it be nice…”

We get older. Mother Nature calls it creative destruction…maybe. When the shit hits the tiara.

I learned early on to care for the little guys. Or: this film destroys me. How I spent the end of the world… I remember seeing this in a dingy room spending my last five dollars to have it on demand. It is as good as I remember. If they ever send another one of those time capsules into space…you know, the ones with music by Bach and such…they should reconsider this film as one of the most touching pieces of art humanity has ever produced.

Sometimes the little guy is a long, lanky guy…and so it is in this movie. Andrei (CristianVăraru) is like a Romanian Napoleon Dynamite. But this is no comedy. Imagine living in a country where emigration is forbidden. That’s a big way of saying, “you can’t leave.” No exit.

Văraru is so good in this that it is unreal. Imagine the dorkiest kid you ever went to school with…picked on, beaten, made fun of… Well, Andrei is determined to get out of Romania. This is communist Romania…in the year(s) leading up to the fall of Ceaușescu. Andrei is the new kid in town as well. He shows up with a police escort. The military police dump his family’s stuff onto the unpaved, rainy road and he starts life anew as the neighbor of Eva (Dorotheea Petre).

[At this point I must pause and catch my breath, because Petre’s acting is one of the most remarkable phenomena I have ever seen. Thank you.]

Dorotheea starts off as an average girl…in fact, literally the girl next door…soon enough. She has a sort of jock, soldier boyfriend. They go to the communist school. The idiot guy sneaks her out of class like a luckless James Dean. As they are halfway making out, he kicks over a statue (bust) of Ceaușescu . Dorotheea ends up taking the blame. She doesn’t squeal, but the dude is a cop’s son.

And thus life changes for Dorotheea. She is removed from the communist youth party by her comrades; her colleagues. Keep in mind, there is no choice in the matter as far as being a member or not. As she won’t admit to a crime she didn’t commit, she is moved to a school for rejects and losers…a little reeducation.

There she meets her new neighbor Andrei. He’s not like the other dudes. He’s thin as a rail and has gigantic lips. He’s weird.

They become friends and she learns that Andrei is planning to escape from Romania. He is going to cross the Danube. There’s no waltzes of Viennese blue in these waters…this is the icy Danube of totalitarian government. He agrees to take Dorotheea along. They train. In perhaps the most touching (and certainly the most visceral) scene, the two practice acclimating to freezing waters by immersing themselves in an old bathtub filled with floating ice. Andrei even rigs up flotation vests using old coffee cans.

And so one night the militia (secret service) show up at Andrei’s house. He’s one step ahead. He will have to leave now if he’s going to leave at all. The two set off and hop a train. It is an amazing story of the desire to be free. They finally arrive at the crossing point. Armed guards watch the river with automatic weapons…ready to shoot any who try to escape from this utopia.

As they are halfway across the river, Dorotheea turns back. Fear? No. She remembers her adorable little brother…one of the ones too young to have this chance.

Timotei Duma plays Lalalilu (Lilu for short). It is for him that Dorotheea returns to the grey monotony of Eastern European socialism. Andrei makes it to Italy and sends pictures, a denim jacket and Toblerone. I’ve never seen a girl look so sad while eating chocolate in all my life. As you might notice, I’m not too worried about dangling modifiers at this point either.

And so Dorotheea soldiers on. She even gets back together (somewhat) with the cop’s son because he is supplying medicine for her sick little brother. Poor kid is always getting fevers… But the sadness is in her eyes…and her first sexual experience turns out to be just a momentary diversion from her horribly drab, drab life.

And then it happens. It happens in more than a few Romanian New Wave films…because it is the moment: the fall of communism. Dorotheea and Lilu and the parents hug and dance around like a Matisse painting while verbalizing the moment…”we’re free!!!”

This is darn near a perfect film. This is a film for the little guys. This is a film for the forgotten corners of the world. This is a film for people with drab, drab lives who feel like prisoners–who have no dream other than the hope of managing a smile once in a while. Cătălin Mitulescu made a piece of art to be cherished and hidden and shared and preserved. This is why I love cinema.

This is the holy grail of awkward. For all us misfits, all us loners, all us wallflowers: this is the glory of being a loser. Sellers may have been better in Being There, but this is his most perfect film.

The name Hrundi V. Bakshi is to outcasts what Humbert Humbert is to perverts. Sellers plays Bakshi in such a painfully ill-at-ease way that we just wanna give the guy a hug. If you are looking for the fount from which sprang Napoleon Dynamite, this is it.

Hrundi says the wrong thing…at the wrong time…always. Except for this one night when a beautiful starlet (ill-suited to such a vacuous profession) sees in him the spark which makes life worth living.

Bakshi may be a man of impeccable manners, but he is honest to the core. However, he is prodigious when it comes to “stepping in it.” From the very outset of the party, he must extricate himself from the first of many delicate situations. It’s not easy being Hrundi.

Yes, Mr. Bakshi just wasn’t meant for this world. He is like the dodo bird. His heart is too pure and he is green in all but the Hindustani language. Some might yell “racism” at Sellers in brown face, but it is really a very respectable portrait of an Indian man with great humility through and through.

There are few movies I enjoy watching more than this one. Samuel Beckett never concocted a situation equal to the artful absurdity which Blake Edwards here captured on screen.

And so three cheers for Hrundi…and may all of us Bakshis find our Claudine Longets. Birdie num num!